Chapter 6 A Saiyan??? And the Big Green Man Saturday, June 7

"Hi Mom! I'm home!" Roshi yelled as he walked into his house.

"Slip has been trying to get a hold of you for the past two days." Roshi's mother said when he found her in her sunroom reading.

"Well I turned my cell phones off for a reason. The camping trip went well and I can't say I mind not being distracted."

Roshi's mother smiled knowingly. "I'm sure you had plenty on you mind son. So, how soon am I going to get to meet this girlfriend of yours?"

"Um, she's just a friend mom, and you have already met." Roshi said while quickly backing out of the room. He would rather face a million people like Rock then be alone in a room with his mother when she started prying into his personal life. "Ah yeah, anyway, it's late and I'm tired, so I'm going to bed. See you in the morning."

Son Beth shook her head and went back to her reading. 'He can't avoid me forever.' * * *

"Roshi! It's about time you got home! I have a major problem and I don't know whom else to turn to. Hurry up and come to my lab we need to talk."

Roshi glanced at his watch. "Slip, it is 10:45! Can't this wait until morning?"

"No! I've already waited almost two days! I would have gone and got you from your stupid camping trip if I would have had the time. Now get your butt in motion and don't argue with me!"

Roshi rolled his eyes stood up turned around stuck his butt in front of the camera and wiggled it. "Ok, my butt is in motion, now what?"

"ROSHI! You are such an ASS at times! I don't have time for your tomfoolery. We have a major crisis here!"

"Fine, I'll be there in a bit." Roshi said as he ended the connection.

Slip was a month older then he was, and was for all practical purposes his surrogate sister. The two of them spent a lot of time together annoying each other to no end. But at the same time, she was probably the one person his age that he could truly rely on in all situations. For her to be as panicked as she was meant that there really was something going on. Roshi guessed it had something to do with Capsule Corp, since her parents had more or less left her in charge while they were on vacation.

It took Roshi a leisurely half hour to get to Capsule Corp's complex in West City. Slip was waiting impatiently in front of the old dome.

"Roshi! What took you so long? Hurry up, we have a big problem."

"What?"

"Agggh! Just follow me!" she said as she walked to the private elevator that lead to her lab.

As a seventeenth birthday gift, Slip's parents had given her the codes to get into one of the old labs that had not been used in many years. It had once been Bulma's, the first Bulma. It had been abandoned when a larger domed complex had been built next door to the original dome. The new building had newer equipment and bigger labs. So, the old labs got turned into storage rooms.

The gift had not been something new to Slip. In fact she and Roshi had broken into that very lab as kids and found all kinds of interesting things.

Slip's scouter had been one such early discovery.

It did mean that she could now access the computers and other equipment that had been code locked. So she had spent many many months trying to find just what all the lab had in it that was still useful.

"As you know, my parents went with your dad to Namek. They said that they needed a vacation. Your dad needed to get to Namek and since they were going to stop at Namek anyway they took your dad with them. They planned to go on the scenic route, which would take them 10 days to get to Namek."

"So..."

PJ decided to take a cruse on his stupid yacht and he won't accept calls. My parents also will not accept any calls. They said I could handle everything. Well they're wrong!"

"Ah, Slip, what's wrong? Hey you listening?"

"They're wrong and she is looking for us and killing people. Then Buu is gone and no one is here to protect us and she is probably going to come and kill us and we didn't even do anything. And then my parents are going to..."

"Ah, SLIP! YOU STILL HAVE NOT TOLD ME WHAT IS WRONG!" Roshi shouted at her to get her attention.

"AHH! GEEZE DO YOU HAVE TO YELL IN MY EAR?!?!?! I'M GETTING TO IT!!!"

"Yeah you were spouting off a huge incomprehensible rant about someone who is looking for us and killing people. And what's this about Buu being gone?"

"Incomprehensible my butt, you understood everything I said!"

"SLIP! Hearing the words, and understanding the problem are two totally different things. Would you just take a deep breath, calm down, and start from the beginning?"

"Haaaahhh whooooo, Ok I'll tell you from the beginning."

Slip went on to tell him about how her parents had left her in charge of the Capsule Corp. Well, the secret projects at least. PJ and the normal managers and other people took care of the day-to-day workings of the megacorp.

Early Friday morning she had received a priority distress message from one such project.

Slip showed him the message while she attempted to explain. She said that it was from the survey ship that they had investigating the debris from Planet Vegeta.

A woman looked into the screen with an expression of absolute terror. Then a young woman dressed in bright Pink, white and black combat armor walked into the room. She threatened to kill the woman if she didn't tell her how to find the Saiyans. She eventually blew a hole in the side of the ship and killed a different woman by blowing off her head before leaving the remaining man and the woman who had sent the recording to suffocate when their air ran out.

Slip told him that after watching the transmission, she immediately tried to call back her parents ship, which had just left an hour before. But she got a prerecorded message from her parents saying that she should bother PJ with any Corp related problems, and she could handle anything else that came up. They would not accept any messages during their trip.

So she tried to call her Uncle PJ, but he had left a prerecorded message saying that if you didn't have the access codes to his voice mail system you obviously were not important and he would be back when he was back.

Roshi shook his head in wonderment. PJ was a Co-VP with his father, but in reality the man was just a figurehead that made commercials and stayed out of the actual running of the company. "That sounds just like PJ."

Slip ignored the comment, and continued her explanation. After failing to get a hold of her parents, PJ, she tried calling Roshi. After that, she flew to Kami's Sanctuary and see what he and Buu would say.

Kami had told her that an old friend had shown up just about an hour before and taken Buu to train on some other planet!

"Do you see my problem Roshi? Buu could have killed her when she showed up. Or your dad could have. But with everyone gone, you are now the strongest fighter on Earth."

"Hey, what am I? A cream puff or something? You know that I am almost as good as my father!"

"Yeah, but watch this. The transmission also included video documentation from the previous hours. Look at what she does to this man."

Roshi watched as she chucked a man into a bulkhead breaking his neck and back.

"So, that's really no big deal."

"What? She chucked him like he was a bag of chips! I've never seen anyone do anything like that before!"

"Uhhh, you haven't?" Roshi realized that she was surprised at the action, not the strength of the act. It was not letting her think straight. Spotting a gray piece of metal he went over and picked it up.

"Hey Slip, what kind of metal is this?"

"What! There's a killer looking for us and you are so bored that you have to go look for things to break!! Are you so absent minded that you can't see how much trouble we are in?" She demanded.

"Just tell me what it is."

"Hmmm oh, it's a layered crystalline titanium alloy, you can't bend it." She said as Roshi snapped the rod in two.

"Ahhh, you shouldn't have been able to break it either! That rod was 500 times stronger than steel!!! How did you do that?"

"Slip do you even know your own strength? You could have killed that man in the exact same manner. The fact that she killed him only means that she is brutal, not that she is strong. Besides, Goku and Vegeta and our ancestors faced people much stronger than the Buu living with Dende. If you remember, Buu could blow up whole solar systems. If she comes here before my dad gets back I'll just have to fight her."

"But what if you aren't strong enough?" Slip asked sounding frightened.

Roshi pondered for a bit. "Well, my father wanted me to work on my ki skills. Looks like the Universe has conspired with him to make sure I actually do. All I can really do is train until she gets here. Who knows, I might not be stronger then her, but the least I can do is try."

"Ok, how do I help?" Slip asked not sounding reassured.

"Well first I want to watch that transmission closer. There may be something we're missing."

"Ok," Slip said as she put the transmission on the big screen and started it playing back on repeat play.

Roshi watched several times. 'Something isn't right about this. I can't quite place my finger on it.'

"What the!" Roshi suddenly exclaimed. "Slip back it up to when she walks onto the bridge and zoom in on her chest."

Slip looked at him incredulously. "Roshi, that is hardly the type of thing you should need to look at closer!"

"What? Oh! Would you get your mind out of the gutter? I want to get a closer look at that symbol on the right side of her armor." Roshi said shaking his head.

"I was only teasing. Here you go. Don't enjoy yourself too much."

Ignoring her, he looked at the symbol and muttered. "I thought so. Could you zoom in on her waist please?"

Slip giggled and recentered the zoom.

"Slip, I said her waist not her crotch"

"You are absolutely no fun. You must really be serious about that girl you took camping." Slip pouted, but moved the picture up.

"Slip would you lay off? We are just friends!" Roshi said before he turned to look at the screen. Upon seeing what he had half expected but hoped not to see, he blanched. "Ok Slip, what do you see?"

Slip looked at the picture. Well she has no fashion sense. Her fuzzy grayish brown belt really clashes with the hot pink armor. It looks dumb."

Roshi rolled his eyes and walked over to the computer consul. He split the screen into four parts. The first window he put a full body shot into. The next he zoomed in on the scouter. The last two he zoomed on onto the symbol on her chest, and her waist.

"That isn't a belt. I would say it is her tail."

Recognition dawned on slip and her jaw just about bounced off the floor. "But that's impossible! She can't be a Saiyan! Vegeta and Goku were the only two that survived! We would have known about any other survivors years ago!

"Tell that to her. Seeing this makes me wonder if I will actually have to fight. But then, Vegeta's people were ruthless murderers and planet thieves, so we had better be prepared for a fight." Roshi said.

"She can't be a Saiyan!" Slip said once again. * * *

Meanwhile Ichigo was in route to Namek.

It took Five days to reach Namek. By the second day Ichigo was out of fresh food. Ichigo was using the training simulator quite heavily and had not realized how little real food she had until after one particularly grueling session.

GURGLE. Her stomach was making a terrible racket. Ichigo stopped her workout and looked down at her stomach. Shaking her head she then headed for the ship's galley.

'Food, I need to eat something if I am to keep up this pace.' Ichigo thought as she stepped into the ship's main pantry. 'I think I'll eat some of everything.' She opened up the refrigerator. "AHHHH!! WHERE'S ALL MY FOOD?!?!?!"

She almost panicked as she looked into the empty cooler. "Oh no, all I have left to eat are support rations!"

Support rations offered a measly 12,000 Calories a bar and tasted like dried cardboard. While being nutritionally adequate, Ichigo had never been forced to live off the things before.

Tuesday

"Approach vector to Namek, Landing in 2 minutes." the computer reported.

'Hurry up!' Ichigo thought, 'if I have to eat another stupid icky support bar, I'll die. I need real food!'

"Computer, give me a scouter reading, and scan the planet for any large agricultural settlements."

"Scanning. There are approximately 500 life forms with power levels between 1,000 and 5,000. There are 6 life forms with power levels of 5,000 - 15,000. There is one life form with power level between 20,000 and 30,000. There is one life form at 56,000. There is a city with a large agricultural network in the northern continent."

'Fifty-six Thousand! I need to find the Vegeta Saiyans, and those might be them, but I do not want to tangle with them before I have to. And if it is not them, I don't want to fight them at all.' Ichigo thought to herself.

"Where is the highest power level?"

"It is located on an island off the southern continent."

"Set down in the northern agricultural region."

Ichigo was heading for Peace City, a human colony that the Capsule Corp had helped to set up with cooperation of the Namekians 216 Years ago.

The Human colonists helped the Namekians with their agissa plants, and the Namekians helped the Humans grow their food and build their city. It was an all-together happy partnership.

As soon as the ship set down, Ichigo set about finding herself some food. Se quickly found a herd of beef grazing on a meadow.

Hmmm, they look kind of like the milk cows back home. They should be edible.

She decided to zap one and see how it tasted. After a meal that would feed 20 or more humans she decided that she should grab several of these animals and put them in her ship. They tasted good. She then found a field of tomatoes and after tentatively tasting one grabbed several hundred of them and took them to her ship. Next, she found some potatoes. Realizing that the tubers would be a good source of carbohydrates she created a windblast with her ki and blew all the dirt off of about 200 plants.

Of course all of this took time and she had been spotted. The same weak life forms as those that Ichigo had found on the ship were starting to gather in a crowd. Finally one of them got fed up with her taking all of their food.

"Now hold it right there missy." A man in a blue uniform said.

Ichigo did not want to cause any trouble, but her scouter reported that the strongest one in this group had a power level of 430. They were no threat, but she had to stay in character.

She turned an looked at him through her big Blue-Gray eyes and asked, "Or what?"

"Or, Or, I'll have to shoot." he said as He pulled up a large gray object.

Ichigo started giggling. 'Oh, the ignorance of these people.' She remembered that she was supposed to act evil and turned her giggle into an evil wispy laugh.

"Ha, I am looking for the Saiyans, one of them supposedly fought legendary battle here long ago. Now tell me what you know or I will shoot." Ichigo said as she used a weak Ki bolt to turn the man's gun into molten scrap.

They all looked at her with dumbfounded expressions and big sweat drops.

"Come on you idiots have to know something other then how to die!"

A big fat man came forward. "Um, the only legendary battle I know about was with Mr. Satan and Cell..." The man realized that he was not telling her what she wanted to know.

"Anyway, if want to kill us all, you can't. Mr. Satan's descendant's are still alive and they can save us from..." Slap! "ack, ku, gurgle..."

Ichigo realized that it was amazingly easy to kill these creatures. The lightest of slaps had ripped of the poor man's face. It sure wasn't hard to maintain an evil act when the slightest action seemed to kill someone. It was starting to gnaw on her conscience. 'Is saving my people worth it if it turns me into a monster just like Blizzard?'

'No, it is not.' She decided that from now on she would try to be destructive without killing anyone.

She turned and sent out a ki blast that blew up about ten square km of farmland. 'There, that feels better.'

"Now does anyone have any idea what happened to the Saiyans?"

About a third of them had passed out, the rest were running for their lives.

'Darn,' she thought, 'no one knows anything. Well I guess I had better go find one of the higher-powered people on this planet, maybe one of them would know. But first, I need to finish collecting food.'

On the next trip back to her ship a strange green and pink man was sitting on the top of it.

"IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE I SUGEST YOU GO AWAY!" She yelled at him as she approached.

The green man cocked an eye (Namekians do not have eyebrows to cock) at her. "Hah, You are quite the comedian. I have a suggestion for you."

She cocked her eye right back at him. She had in her life met very few who would dare be so crass with a princess of the Saiyan race. This was intriguing. She turned her scouter back on (funny how it always seems to be off when it was needed most.) and looked at the green man.

"Oh you do? Well what is it?" She then looked at the reading. 52,000! Crap! Where did he come from?

"I suggest you stop killing humans and leave. What you look for is not here." he replied.

Gulp, "Oh really, What do you care if a few insignificant ants die here or there?" She replied.

He started to laugh, a sound that was much like the grinding of gravel, or a small thunderstorm brewing in the distance. "They are hardly insignificant. In the last five hundred years their planet has been attacked no less than fifteen times. The attacker or attackers in each case have always failed. If you go there you too will loose, hmmgh hmmmgh hmmgh, and you would lose badly."

"Oh is that right, by the looks of them they couldn't defend against a flea. If anything significant had ever attacked they would surely have been destroyed."

"That is what the Saiyan Prince Vegeta thought, and King Cold and his sons Frieza and Cooler."

Ichigo was shocked; those pathetic creatures could not have beaten a Changeling. He had to be bluffing.

'Hmmm, if that is a bluff, then,' she tapped her scouter again. The Zugas could falsely raise their power levels to confuse even the best scouter for short periods of time. It was possible that this green man was doing the same thing. 'HA! Only 5,000! He would be a piece of cake, and the jerk deserved it.'

"Alright, So you know about the Saiyans, what do you know?"

"Only that there are none left. You might as well go back to whatever rock you have been hiding under. Frieza blew up the Planet Vegeta and then on the first planet Namek, he killed Prince Vegeta who had retreated from the human's planet. The only other remaining Saiyan, named Kakarott, fought and defeated Frieza. Frieza, however, managed to cause the whole planet to blow up moments after the fight ended."

Ichigo was feeling a good bit of doubt in the possible success of her mission. Then she realized that that was what the green man wanted. He HAD to be lying.

She decided to attack.

"Ki punch!" She screamed as she delivered a glowing fist to the side of the green man's face. While not as impressive looking as an energy beam, the Ki punch was one of her most powerful and effective attacks as it normally would have transferred a huge amount of Ki energy into the green man's face.

It did nothing.

Her hand had hit nothing. Her hand went right through the false image of the green man.

"What? Where did he go?" She said aloud.

Her scouter wasn't picking up anything. Then it found him, behind her. It had to be a malfunction or something.

"Here is an attack one of those humans came up with, hope you like it!"

"KAMEHAMEHA" the man screamed from behind her.

She spun, NO! The white-blue beam was headed right for her ship. She couldn't block it with an attack of her own without damaging the ship. She made a desperate move and flung herself to the left to block the beam. Her scouter still showed the man at a power level of 5,000. His beam should have been easy to stop.

The blue beam turned and rammed right into her as she flew to stop it.

"AAAHHHH"

Ichigo had not had time to realize that the beam had turned to hit her. She did however realize just how much that beam had hurt. Her Saiyan armor exploded as the beam hit her in the shoulder. Belatedly she realized that the beam was much much stronger then it had looked.

Her neck, shoulder and left arm were blistered and burned. The ship thankfully was not damaged.

"W... Who are you?" She demanded.

The green man hovered a few tens of meters away and smiled.

"I am named Piccolo after one of the greatest Namekian fighters ever. You cannot beat me. I suggest you retreat."

"A Saiyan never retreats from a battle!"

"Oh, so you are a Saiyan? That matters little, even Saiyans retreat when the battle is pointless. They will leave," he said in a menacing tone.

I will beat him! I have to. He has the information that I want and can tell me where to find the Vegeta rebels. I must get that information!

"And how do you know this if all of the Saiyans are supposedly dead?"

"Oh, you will find out... Eventually."

At that he came at her again. He sent out a rapid succession of Ki blasts that chased her around in the sky. Thankfully she was faster than he had thought.

Ichigo saw her opening. While he was concentrating on controlling his Renzoku Energy Dan like Ki blasts, he was vulnerable.

"Star Ripper!" She sent out a jagged edged rapidly spinning ball of ki. It flashed through the sky on its way to hit him. Then, at what had to be the last moment he responded.

"Masenko!" He sent his own ball of energy at the Star Ripper. They collided in midair and exploded.

What surprised Ichigo, however, was not that he destroyed her attack, but he had managed to keep his other attack following her. In the moments that she had watched her attack explode, the ki blasts had caught up. Ten or twenty of the small blasts hit her.

In the split second that the sky turned white with light and smoke, Ichigo felt her left leg get grabbed.

"What?" she wondered aloud a moment before be hurled into the ground.

"Tsuihidan!" the man screamed as he sent two comets of energy at her.

Ichigo got up and started to fly in an attempt to get away from the balls of energy.

"AAAAHHHH!!" she screamed as the green man appeared right in front of her. She pulled up to hit him and the comets hit her in the back.

KA-WHAP, KA-WHAP!

Her hair singed. She could smell it burning. But before she could get her barring and find the green man back a fist hit her in the face. Her scouter over her right eye shattered and a fragment got caught in her eye.

Now she couldn't see, her left arm was useless, all of the armor on her back was gone, and her face was bleeding. She couldn't understand how he was beating her so thoroughly.

She saw him out of her left eye.

"Blaze" She screamed as she sent everything she had left into a one handed beam of fire. Amazingly it hit and blew most of the purple clothing off of the green man. Now he looked mad.

"MASENKO!" he screamed.

'That attack again?' She quickly dodged it and flew in to hit him with a Ki Punch.

THUD! The attack landed against his shoulder, crushing and deeply bruising his arm while throwing him to the side.

'Yes! I can beat him!' she thought.

That was when the Masenko hit her in the back of her right leg and sent her spinning straight into the ground.

She bounced twice and slowly got up.

"BASTARD!!! YOU ARE GOING TO PAY FOR THAT!!!!!"

"Oh right, you and what army is going to come beat me up?" he replied smugly. Why don't you try and dodge this!"

"Makankosappo!" the man screamed as he fired the spinning beam.

She desperately fired a Star Ripper at the beam as it raced towards her.

WOOM! The beam destroyed the ball and continued towards her at a furious pace.

"AH NO!! Ki WALL!!!" she screamed as she put her right hand out at a perpendicular angle to the beam and created a plane of ki energy.

WHOOOOOSH!!!! The beam hit her hand and exploded throwing her back several hundred feet.

Her hand was bloody and burned. She tried to flex her fingers and realized that several of the bones in her hand and wrist were broken.

'Ouch that stings!' Ichigo was completely humiliated. She shouldn't have been beaten so easily. The green man was right. She was going to have to retreat. This was not her mission. If she were to save her people she couldn't die in an attempt to teach someone not to lie to her.

Ichigo climbed back into her ship and set it to find some inhabited planet while she was in the regeneration tank.

Piccolo the 3rd. watched the ship depart. He wondered why he had been told to allow someone that dangerous and powerful to escape, but he had listened to his father (Dende). He also was quite happy that he had not had to lie to her. There were no full-blooded Saiyans left, and everything else had been true. Even if he had left out some details. * * *

Well there you go. One more chapter to read. 7 should be up shortly. Please review.

The Smooster